Voyager 2 Speaking In Tongues 260
dangle sends in an update from the borderland of Sol. "Voyager 2's flight data system, which formats information before beaming it back to Earth, has experienced a hiccup that has altered the pattern in which it sends updates home, preventing mission managers from decoding the science data beamed to Earth from Voyager 2. The spacecraft, which is currently 8.6 billion miles (13.8 billion km) from Earth, is apparently still in overall good health, according to the latest engineering data received on May 1. 'Voyager 2's initial mission was a four-year journey to Saturn, but it is still returning data 33 years later,' said Voyager project scientist Ed Stone of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. 'It has already given us remarkable views of Uranus and Neptune, planets we had never seen close-up before. We will know soon what it will take for it to continue its epic journey of discovery.' The space probe and its twin Voyager 1 are flying through the bubble-like heliosphere, created by the sun, which surrounds our solar system."
Decoding (Score:5, Funny)
I think I can make it out. It says "All... your... base..."
But Seriously... (Score:4, Insightful)
They broke it (Score:3, Funny)
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No, Voyager's obviously Snowcrashed.
V'ger expects an answer. (Score:5, Funny)
Don't piss it off, NASA.
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Oblig. Red Dwarf reference (Score:2)
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I for one Welcome our new Alien Overlords.
v'ger (Score:5, Insightful)
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No that's V'ger. Voyager 6 is no more.
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What! (Score:5, Funny)
"It has already given us remarkable views of Uranus..."
Well, I never!
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Re:What! (Score:5, Funny)
"It has already given us remarkable views of Uranus..."
Well, I never!
You most certainly *did*. And NASA has the pics to prove it.
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Re:What! (Score:5, Funny)
Tom...
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I think he means:
Article 34: Bros cannot make eye contact during a devil's threeway.
It's so obivous (Score:2, Interesting)
Either the probe has been out there long enough to become sentient or this is an elaborate trap set by aliens. Either way, our doom is imminent.
Orly? (Score:2)
It has already given us remarkable views of Uranus
Teehee. I could never be an astronomer.
*insert oblig goatse reference here*
Re:Orly? (Score:5, Funny)
I used to work for a chemistry department whose *nix boxes were named after elements. The back up sun server (it was previously was the primary server, but it was retired in favor of a more powerful sun box and just kept as a backup) was Uranus. Every time you said Uranus, one of the *nix admins would say "Whose anus?"
Now, what was really funny was this person had a memory issue. So EVERY TIME he thought it was the first time he had told you the "joke". It got to the point where before he could even say Uranus, every professor would say yes whose anus, and he would just sit there shocked and say "How did you know I was going to say that?"
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I used to work for a chemistry department whose *nix boxes were named after elements
Wouldn't that guy have to ask "Whose Anium?" then??
Re:Orly? (Score:4, Informative)
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Uranus isn't an element.
He also didn't specify that the server or backup server were in the Chemistry department. He only said that the *nix boxes in the department were named after elements. [/pedantic]
ROI (Score:2, Insightful)
Talk about return on investment!
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33 years old = bit rot and other SS parts going ba (Score:2, Insightful)
33 years old = bit rot and other SS parts going bad??
Battery getting weak?
Some kind of y2k error?
Rollover error?
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I'd have thought a cosmic ray flipped an important bit.
Re:33 years old = bit rot and other SS parts going (Score:5, Informative)
Pissaw, young'uns don't know anything anymore; more likely a fried 1452 core sense amplifier. That bad-boy left Earth back when a 1024 Bit, 500 mS static ram was exotic, and yes that is bits not bytes and milliseconds not nanoseconds. Ferrite Core memory was the state of the art back in 1977, when hard-disk drives were the size of washing machines and I was a young'un myself punching Fortran code on to cards.
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The short answer is no, Voyager's frame isn't different enough to the Earth's for that huge a time dilation to have occurred purely because of that.
The long answer requires recourse to general relativity, which I'm far too tired for I'm afraid.
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The long answer requires recourse to general relativity, which I'm far too tired for I'm afraid.
Which is another prediction of general relativity!
Tried to find some more info (Score:5, Interesting)
All the news articles report pretty much the same, digested, not particularly informative stuff. The mission page [nasa.gov] hasn't been updated in a while, the NASA news item isn't any more detailed [nasa.gov], and the last operations report [nasa.gov] was from March 12. But I did learn this from the operations report: they're running the whole mission on less than 275 Watts of power from the RTG units. Wow.
Re:Tried to find some more info (Score:5, Interesting)
Reading that operations report I was most impressed by these two lines:
and
Wow -- that's an incredible amount of Deep Space Network [nasa.gov] time in a week -- and, looking at earlier reports, it seems to be representative of the time used in a typical week. I had no idea that the Voyagers were consuming that much DSN time. I assume "large aperture coverage" means use of the 70m dishes -- also an impressive number.
That much DSN time must be very expensive.
Garbled how? (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder if it'd be possible to reconstruct the signal. We know what the signal is supposed to look like, and should be able to find out what's different.
Re:Garbled how? (Score:5, Insightful)
You hope in any future endeavor like this, if it hasn't been done already, that each batch of data it sends would start with some sort of test/reference data that they could compare against.
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That takes memory and processor cycles - which they had not nearly enough of to do the job, let alone enough to guard against a small class of failures which may or may not happen.
Re:Garbled how? (Score:4, Informative)
Did you notice that the RCA 1802 page you linked to specifically says that the chip was not used on Voyager?
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Re:Garbled how? (Score:5, Funny)
They should put it on BitTorrent labeled "Assasin's Creed 3 with Ubisoft's unbreakable DRM -- REAL !!!1! 0-day warez CDC propz to Hippie!!!". It will be fixed in a week.
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Yeah but what good is it going to do NASA when the pirates figure out how to work Voyager's data into a playable version of AC3? They want the science data!
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I wonder if it'd be possible to reconstruct the signal. We know what the signal is supposed to look like, and should be able to find out what's different.
I suggest calling up Jeff Goldblum to see if he can take a crack at this by plugging the signal into his laptop.
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Maybe that just means that the signal has become too weak for even the voting method to work.
Or... [puts sci fi hat on] maybe we are picking up an alien transmission, that without the voting process would be too weak to notice.
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Ice Giants (Score:3, Interesting)
"It has already given us remarkable views of Uranus and Neptune, planets we had never seen close-up before."
And, sadly, we haven't been back since. I can't quite bring myself to call this a travesty, but it does seem like a wasted chance to explore some still-mysterious planets. (Granted, it's expensive to send orbiters out there.)
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Sorry, we need those resources to send heavy bags of water to Mars!
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Ah, yes. The "ugly bags of mostly water". How I loathe them.
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we prefer "bags of meat"
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I remember seeing on a TV program about the Voyager project how serendipitous the timing of the launch was - where you could hop from planet to planet to planet using the gravity well of each planet to jump to the next one. Basically the alignment of the planets when Voyager launched made this possible, and such an alignment isn't going to come around again in our lifetime. So you'd need to build seperate probes to go to each planet, instead of being able to send one probe to many of them.
Re:Ice Giants (Score:4, Informative)
Well, no. The outer planet approximate syzygy provided the most efficient profile, mission timewise. You can always gravity sling from one sufficiently massive planetary body to another, using the correct entry and exit vector for the current velocity, it would just take longer to visit them all at this point in time, as you might have to go all the way across solar system to reach the "next" body and then back across again for the next hop.
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> You can always gravity sling from one sufficiently massive planetary body to another, using the correct entry and exit vector for the current velocity
But how do you steer the vehicle? Can you even?
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Same way you change speeds: use the main engine to create an acceleration.
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I'm pretty sure the Voyager probes are the exception to that, since they're aimed to actually exit the solar system rather than eventually returning.
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The next mission is going to Jupiter, actually, to visiting the icy moons. That's been determined. Uranus and Neptune were never very seriously on the table, sadly. (The candidates this round were Jupiter system, Icy sats of Jupiter, Titan, and Enceladus. And Enceladus wasn't even given much of a chance, in truth.)
event horizon? (Score:4, Funny)
D.J.: I thought it said "liberate me" - "save me." But it's not "me." It's "liberate tutame" - "save yourself." And it gets worse.
[Plays the distress signal again]
D.J.: There - I think that says "ex inferis." "Save yourself... from hell." Look, if what Doctor Weir tells us is true, this ship has been beyond the boundaries of our universe, of known scientific reality. Who knows where it's been, what it's seen. Or what it's brought back with it.
Miller: From hell.
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I've often wondered about that movie...
Obstentionally a computer gone sentient would learn language from the programming and documentation stored on said computer. So WTF did the Latin come from?
That or the computer was programmed by a nerd like me who writes comments in Latin when they are observational comments rather than illustrative ones.
It had a collision if NOMAD. (Score:2)
After the collision they repaired each other. That is where the confusion came from.
More Like it? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have no idea what I'm talking about here, but...
We now have much better technology, both for getting to space, and for science aboard a probe. For example, even something like the British Beagle 2 Mars mission cost a few million to make, and although it didn't end up returning much of use, it demonstrates how 'easy' such things are (or how hard things are, depending on your point of view, I suppose).
So I'm wondering, isn't it worth mankind's time to build a (say) £25M long-range probe, like the Voyagers, only designed for the purpose, and shoved into space in some get-there-fast manner?
I'm sure we can argue about the best use of a limited budget, and what constitutes the best science returned for the spend, for the rest of our lives, but a "cheap" probe sent out every few years to do something a bit random might well do wonders for us and our understanding of the Solar system, let alone the Universe as a whole. I wouldn't presume to say we should do such things at the expense of anything more major, but more to foster some 'experimentation' in space.
Just a thought... TFI Friday :-)
Re:More Like it? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's probably relatively cheap to build such a probe, and probably also relatively easy to get the funding for a short project like that, but the problem comes when we have to listen to the probe. That's probably expensive and a very long-term project, which are very difficult to get funded(plus they are the prime victims of budget cuts, because such long-term projects are often funded directly outside the normal proposal calls.)
Re:More Like it? (Score:5, Informative)
It would probably cost a good bit more than that to build a long-range probe that has to work for many years before reaching its target. Also, you have to pay for ground stations and personnel to monitor it for the years it takes to get somewhere. We have no magic "get-there-fast manner" today; in fact, the Voyagers were able to do so much because of a once-in-our-lifetime planetary alignment (the Grand Tour). The NASA New Horizons probe is going to Pluto (and beyond), and it will take 9.5 years to get there (and if the launch had been delayed by another few weeks, it would have taken several years longer because there wouldn't have been a Jupiter slingshot fly-by).
Re:More Like it? (Score:4, Insightful)
The advances (and readily available advances) in ion engine technology could be used to drive a spacecraft that will accelerate for years out into deep space after chemical boosting ends. Advances in miniaturization and materials science mean that it can be made lighter and carry more instrumentation with better functionality and reliability than those found on Voyager. If we wanted to do it, we can make a new probe that is lighter, has more capabilities, and is sturdier so it can flier faster and stay alive longer than Voyager. Of course, not sure if we still have the desire to be explorers of the universe.
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If they can make ion drives cheap, you might be onto something. Thing is that to get out of the solar system, you've got to pull some orbital mechanics that involve you paying the outer planets a visit, so you might as well make exploration of that part of the solar system part of the main mission.
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Recording is no problem, it's sending it back. New Horizons will only be able to send back about 8GB of data. Even with the big dish it has and a 70 metre dish on the ground here, you only get about 1 kilobit per second of transfer out at Pluto.
Re:More Like it? (Score:4, Insightful)
You can type "fuck" on slashdot.
maybe... (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps the data has been altered by intelligent beings in order to communicate with us.
Or maybe they did it as a joke.
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They probably did it to keep us ignorant of what lies beyond this solar system.
The man (or alien) is keeping the whole population of this planet down!
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This cannot be that hard... (Score:2, Interesting)
Just include some of the data in a game DRM key, and it will be cracked in a few hours. Problem solved.
Or announce a contest. Most anything as a prize, maybe a spacesuit glove or spare antenna? We crack encryption readily in many cases, so I suspect someone can figure out what rolled over or got zapped by a cosmic ray, and this is fixed for another 33 years or so.
-ps: is Voyager 2 running better than a 1977 Cadillac? Probably. Probably better than a 1977 Mercedes.
What year is it for Voyager 1 & 2? (Score:5, Interesting)
Being that I am not a physicist (though I am a big fan), I am asking any physicists out there if they have figured out how much time has passed for the Voyager satellites according to the laws of relativity compared to Earth. From what I understand, they are traveling around 17km/s. How does that work out over a span of 30-50 years from earthling perspective.
Thanx in advance.
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Re:What year is it for Voyager 1 & 2? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What year is it for Voyager 1 & 2? (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, with the aliens towing in the spaceship, that might be off a bit :-)
>>>bill
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What year is it for us? We're travelling away from Voyager at 17 km/s.
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http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=time+dilation+at+17km%2Fs&a=*FS-_**RelativisticTimeDilationFormula.t-.*RelativisticTimeDilationFormula.to--&f2=33+years&x=0&y=0&f=RelativisticTimeDilationFormula.to_33+years [wolframalpha.com]
Apparently V'ger is now from the future by about 1.7 seconds.
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The difference is a few tens of microseconds per day. Just goes to show how incredibly accurate it needs to be. Quite a piece of work.
just getting an upgrade and exiting the Slow Zone (Score:2)
LoB
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Well, we all know that even simple machinery can become self aware when going far enough into the beyond...
same age as Apple and MicroSoft (Score:5, Insightful)
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B: I'd probably get more done. Multitasking hasn't turned out to be all it's cracked up to be. I sure don't *FEEL* more productive.
Typical science reporting (Score:2)
Message Reads... (Score:3, Funny)
AM I Fucking TH3RE YeT???
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That message qwas of no concern,. When it start broadcasting "Are we Fucking Th3r3 YeT?" we became concerned.
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That message qwas of no concern,. When it start broadcasting "Are we Fucking Th3r3 YeT?" we became concerned.
I heard it was the "ThAt's iT, i'M c0m1ng back NOW to K1cK a11 YoUr Asses cause there aint n0 damb White Castle out here!"
Vogon Poetry anyone (Score:2)
Voyager still on its way
with Vogon Haiku
Astounding revelation! (Score:2)
which formats information before beaming it back to Earth
And the alternative was...?
Are we recording? (Score:2)
Hopefully someone is recording all of this. Even if we can't decode it NOW, chances are that we can at some point -- assuming it's real but mistranslated data and not just random garbage. Why not let BOINC clients chew on some of it and see what they come up with, or divert a small fraction of SETI clients. At least in this case, we KNOW it's trying to communicate with us. This should be a good opportunity to see if we have the capabilities to decipher it.
I know I'd be willing to let my machine ruminate on
Dispatch a speech therapist (Score:3, Funny)
Will Voyager 2 be home next Tuesday between 10 and 2? That's when we have someone available.
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I wonder if it's trying to speak to the dolphins [hubimg.com] but got the language wrong?
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is not how tongues works. If the satellite really was broadcasting in tongues then everyone on the planet would be able to understand the transmissions.
I don't know about that. I, for one, can never figure out what those fucking Pentecostalists are trying to say.